International Public Procurement & Tendering

by Helena Deane on 07/06/11

This weeks' seminar in Galway was a true eye-opener. Sean McCann of Astec Global Consultancy has laid out some really sobering figures relating to the potential in international public procurement that is out there and the current modest role that Ireland is playing on this scene. To give you all some background, ASTEC has worked in more than 100 countries and has won more IFI (World Bank, EC, EBRD) funded international projects than any other Irish company.

Allow me to share some if these statistics with you:

Ireland Concentrates only on 5-6% of the EC Funded Programme under FP7 framework and is instead concentrating on tendering in the declining domestic market

Denmark wins 10 times more contracts in the external markets of the International Financial Institutions (IFIs) compared to Ireland

In contrast, 18% of Irish tenders are won by foreign firms, as many European companies are able to submit tenders in English - compare this to only 4% of publc tenders being won by foreign firms in Denmark, France, and even UK

Opportunities in public sector can be tracked in over 200 countries and they are worth over 800 billion USD/p.a.

There are 5000 new tenders each day - equaling to 1.5 million tenders p.a.

On average, on any given day, there are 200 000 live opportunities available

As a comparison, there are 114 opportunities available in Ireland compared to 1200+ in Poland, 2300+ in France and 757 in Romania

EC contributes a lion share of opportunities by way of funds under the 2007-2013 Programme valued at 975 billion Euro, in addition to the Community Programmes and Structural/Cohesion Funding of further 347 billion Euro

There are many advantages to getting engaged in public procurement: secure payment, up to 60% is paid in advance, IFI work is 'recession proof', and english language is an advantage!